Believe, when you lie
You will never need to recognize yourself
To deceive
To remove all chance of doubt and be received
With your lie
The deception is complete when you concede
And decide
To reject your lives, sacrificed to me

Penance can’t absolve your sin
All your belief
Cannot absolve your sin

Believe, when you lie
You will never need to recognize the source
Of deceit
To renew your faith in God
You must believe, in your lie
The redemption is complete when you conceive
And decline
To release your lives
Sacrificed to me

Penance can’t absolve your sin
All your belief
Cannot absolve your sin

Reap your life, like you want to
recognize, all you’ve come to

Reap your life
Veiled in shadow
Recognize
Faces of the crucified
I can hear their screams tonight
Ever haunting me

Burn your lie into me

Penance can’t absolve your sin
All your belief
Cannot absolve your sin

I don\’t understand it….

Christians are constantly presenting a false God to the world. The God of the bible is nothing like the one you hear preached from pulpits and from mega evangelists on television and the internet. The One True God as revealed in the scriptures, was and remains a God of fierce love and judgment. Absolutely nothing has happened to change Him. In fact, He makes it quite clear to us that He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Today’s Christian Religion portrays quite a different God than the one we see in the Bible. The God of Christianity is soft and fuzzy, never angers, and allows the Christian to blatantly sin without recompense. All this they blame on one they call Jesus, their savior. (Another misleading name referring to the One True Messiah revealed to us in scripture.) Christians put aside scripture, and real life happenings and create their own set of laws and negate God’s judgment in favor of “free will”, and constant atonement for blatant sin.
After the World Trade Center fell on 9-11, days which the one true God judged the U.S.A. Christians were quick to blame it on, the Devil, or some fanatical group of terrorists. They invariably gave all the glory, or call it accredited, one other than God. The same thing happened after the Tsunami in the Near East wiped out so many heathen idol worshippers. “God wouldn’t do that!” was heard from the lips of so many Christians. Oh I know you will be appalled to read this but the truth is hard to bear more often than not. Unfortunately, our society has been brainwashed and misinformed by false teachers and ignorance stemming from the modern day Christian religion, into believing God has changed after thousands of years documented in Scripture.
All you need to do is read the book of Acts in the Bible to realize that even AFTER the resurrection of our Lord, God the Father slew Ananias and his wife for lying to the Holy Spirit. He smote King Herod, and Herod was “eaten by worms” for his failure to give God glory for his stature and power. He delivered the apostle Peter from prison and allowed the guards to be put to death on His account for the escape. The book of Acts is a reference for true believers to understand how the modern day church should function. In it one will find real life examples of believers exercising their God given faith, witnessing the power of the Holy Spirit, and the judgment of the hand of God in action. Above all, they showed a fear of the Lord that is all but lost to modern day Christians. In fact, one passage states that the fear of the Lord spread throughout the entire region! We have yet to see it spread through a single Christian church let alone a region! Everything the early church did and prayed for was directed at bringing God glory and manifestation of His kingdom on earth. If Moses was a modern day Christian, he surely would have stayed in Pharaohs’ household (ignoring his calling from God) proclaiming that “God blessed him so that he could lead the Pharaoh to Jesus”. Instead, Moses chose to serve God rather than have God serve him as with Christians today. Think on it and you will see the difference. A true servant chooses the path of persecution for the greater glory in heaven, while the Christians look for the blessing and reward today, falsely proclaiming that “God has blessed me”. Today’s Christian follows seed faith, and prosperity teachings and thinks God exists for their happiness and well being, rather than for His own glory. They preach about a savior I call Baal Jesus, for he is far too “mushy” to be the Lord of Hosts that the Bible teaches us about, Yashua the Messiah, now called Jesus. They will tell you lies about how Jesus never judges or condemns, only forgives and gives. Their Lord (Baal) is like the energizer bunny, he lets you keep sinning and sinning and sinning… ! The Messiah in the Bible got plenty fed up with liars and hypocrites! On more than one occasion He called the church leaders liars, hypocrites, a brood of vipers, and told them their father was the devil. Jesus Christ also took a bullwhip to the church people defiling the temple with their greed, buying and selling in the name of God. As a rancher I can tell you firsthand that a bullwhip is no laughing matter. The true Jesus meant business, and He took it to them! Today’s church leaders receive no correction for they have made themselves above reproof, and the churches enjoy opening bookstores and coffee shops right in the church! They make all sorts of lame excuses for their sin but the One True God is not fooled. Don’t you be either!
After 9-11, Christians worked overtime to counter that necessary fear of God to convince the nation that it wasn’t the God of the bible who caused that. The tsunami was a real life example of the scripture that says, “If My people will not praise me, the rocks will cry out.” (Says the Lord) If you do not know what causes a tsunami, it is the movement of the earth (rocks!) miles under the ocean floor. In essence, modern day Christianity has created a God that is contrary to the bible. They water down His word in an attempt to get more people to join their ranks, not to be truly reborn and sanctified mind you, but to become “Christians.” There is a huge difference! If you do not know God is a God of wrath, but only believe in the Christian god of mercy, love, and forgiveness, you will never know His mercy. Take this example of two people in an ugly disagreement. If either or both parties has a real fear of the Lord, it would cause them to search their hearts and examine each one’s own accountability in the matter. They repent as a direct result of that fear, and immediately reap the benefit of His mercy. They reconcile and forgive, as well as are forgiven. Because Christians have lost or never had a fear of the Lord, they cannot see the truth in that scenario.
In the book of acts, God took the life of Ananias and his wife for lying to the Holy Spirit and withholding some of the proceeds of the land sale. Other examples follow in the same book of God causing someone’s life to be taken from them. The aftereffect of God’s severe judgment was that, “They were all filled with a fear of the Lord and many believed and followed Him.” Modern day Christianity has created a God that is always “nice”, and they often say, “God wouldn’t do that!”, when confronted with death and destruction. They have served up a false God to their followers, in an effort to win the more and hence the cult religion called Christianity grows. The road and the gate into the cult kingdom of Christianity is wide, everyone is welcome, regardless of the unrepented sin in their lives. But the road and the gate into God’s Kingdom of Heaven is narrow, and only those who seek to be holy as God is holy can tread upon it, so says the word of God.
The God of the bible is a God of mercy, and of judgment, a God of peace and a God of war, a God of patience and a God of wrath. In this He is complete, and by acknowledging the fullness of God one can retain a fear of the Lord and He will be glorified in their sight, in their households, and in their very lives. The Christian god gets very little glory for the things he does. Oh they put on a good show about glorifying their god in their song services and preaching. Yet in day to day life, they only glorify their god when they think he did something, “good.” So often I have been asked or overheard the question,” if God exists, and Jesus loves us then why does He let such bad things happen to little children”? Most Christians will immediately begin to try and gently reason with the doubter, making excuse after excuse for their god. The true God does not need nor does He ask Christians to defend Him to the world.
A true believer, on the other hand, makes no excuses for the God of all creation. As it is written in His holy Word, “Who are you mere man to talk back to God? Shall the thing created say to the One who created it, ‘Why did you make me this way”? I serve my God with fear and reverence, and He does not answer to me. I simply tell those people that God is perfect, and if they wish to use things they do not understand to remain separate from God then have fun in Hell. It is not my duty to try and convince someone God is just. I know He is, and that confidence is strength to my soul. To know God is to know He is perfect in every way. Whatever He allows to happen is perfect, and only by true faith and an infilling of His Holy Spirit can we accept and be at peace with all things. God sets forth the laws of life and man proceeds to violate them. Christians would have you believe that God circumvents His laws for them but that is a false sense of security. The Christian belief is that Jesus came to negate God’s law and allow them to sin and behave badly then still go to heaven after they die. That is why they will have such a sad awakening on judgment day. Jesus Christ came to fulfill all that His Father in Heaven commanded, and spoke through the Prophets. In doing so He will judge these Christians according to His Father’s law and find them guilty. Christians teach and are taught that Jesus waives God’s judgment for their sins, thereby allowing them to live a life of sin without further repentance. That belief is a lie. God said in Proverbs Chapter 30, “Do not add to His words lest He reprove you and you be found a liar”. “All liars have their place reserved for them in the Lake of Fire”. Those who are true believers in God will obey His word, studying it to “show themselves approved” by God. The God of the bible, the One True God, got glorified for every single word and deed He caused to happen, even the death and destruction chronicled for our benefit. Christians today are taught that God is here to bless them and keep them. They say the Sinners Prayer, and then go to a church where they are told Jesus is coming to “rapture” them out of the earth before God’s wrath hits.
But in reality, all throughout the word of God He warns us of the coming judgment on the earth. He clearly tells us that none will escape. He documented for our sake, the chosen people, that is, those who served the One True God, were tested, tried, tortured, tormented, starved, naked, ridiculed and imprisoned for their faith in Him. Not so if you are a Modern Day Christian. Life in Christ today is a free ride to them. There is no true sacrifice and suffering purely because of their faith in the risen Lord Jesus. Christians today only serve Him in their mouths. In truth, as one examines the lifestyle of a Christian today, their god serves them. It is all about what their god can do for them and what blessings and rewards await them. In contrast, true believers in God and Jesus are bond servants, or self willed slaves to the Lord. THAT is what separates the modern day Christians from True Believers. True believers know the fullness of God and do not accept the watered down version dished out from the pulpits of churches today. Next time you happen to meet up with a modern day Christian, ask them why they don’t give their god all the glory. Then ask them to shut up and just live it!

Excerpt from the book, “Spiritual Reality” by B.E. Elias

Take two mothers. One cares for her children because she loves them, and one does because it’s her duty, even though she doesn’t really even like them. In a moralistic sense, Kant said the second mother was more respectable because the motivation was purely ethical. The first mother is of course good, but you can’t know where the motivation to act good comes from.

Religion (at least the Christian one) has a relatively simple morality that is easy for people to follow. Most people don’t bother themselves to generate a more complicated morality, which is sad. But, as long as we can maintain a culture that keeps a decent moral standard for society (the specifics are of course debatable) those who want it simpler will generally just follow along. It’s about culture and about disposition. Religion is not necessary for that. However, in some cases it seems to be what works best. This also makes me sad. We shouldn’t need a proverbial father with a wagging finger to make us moral.

In a sense I agree. I think a true test of one’s morality is to observe how they’d behave if no one, including God, would ever learn what they do.

I’m sure the religious would respond by claiming that their behavior is motivated out of a love for God, not greed or fear. That response aside, I’m more interested in the implications your claim would have if it were true. Namely, religion would be necessary for a properly functioning society. If fear of Hell and love of Heaven and/or God are the only things keeping the religious behaving morally, taking these away would cause mass immorality. Trust would disappear and society would cease functioning.

My guess is that if somehow religion were eliminated from the world (oh, what dream), only a very small minority would revert to gross immorality. A vast majority of formally religious people would go right on being moral.

The reason is that much of morality is instinctual and largely emotional. As partly rational beings, we have a need to explain or rationalize all of our behaviors. Thus when we make a moral judgment that is not based on rationality, we naturally try to explain it to ourselves and others within a rational (or at least nominally rational) framework. For the religious, their reason is that it is “God’s Law”, for humanists, it’s usually a form of some philosophy, like The Golden Rule, Utilitarianism, or Kant’s Categorical Imperatives.

I believe in both cases, the religious and philosophical, the explanations are often wrong. They are convenient story’s we tell ourselves to make sense of our moral instincts. Considering this, it makes sense that both believers and non-believers have overlapping morality. The overlap represents their shared moral instinct. The difference is the ’story’ they use to explain it. I think of the ’stories’ as models of our moral instinct.

But some models are better than others. Religious models often go beyond the core instinctual morality and invent rules that are either completely unnecessary or only temporarily needed. These extra prohibitions on behavior result in unnecessary restrictions on freedom and vilification of people who do not share the same model.

1) While the key concepts of “Don’t Kill, Steal, Lie” etc. may have been initially instilled into Mike in his childhood by religion, these are not ethical concepts in that they are obtained via religion. As religion tries to force ‘morality’ on its membership via what is essentially bribes and strong-arming “Do this and you’ll get an afterlife that’s NOT a fiery burning pit of despair and torture.” Such ‘ethics’ or ‘morality’ are NOT ethics due to this methodology of intilling them via essentially greed and fear.

Thus, Religious ethics are not ethical at all. Atheist ethics, however, come from an individual’s sense of what is essentially ‘the golden rule’ of “Do unto other as you would have them do unto you.” There are no rewards, no threats, only an individual decision to be ethical, thus ethics are truly acquired in this sense.

I’ll leave the other 3 open to other posters. :D

SORRY, you’re too late sonja!!!
I’M THE NEW PROPHET…………
I’ve already ordered mohamed to start worshipping me, but I don’t think he truly BELIEVES!!
I’m going to reserve a special place in hell for him, and pull his asshole over his head so everyone will think he’s wearing a burkah!!

1) Michael’s ethical conscious was created by a religious upbringing.

2) Michael’s secular humanism is a religion.

3) Michael’s ethical conscious is a product of his culture, which is steeped in religion.

4) Michael is faking his morality to avoid judgment and/or punishment from the community, which gets its morality from religion.

Who would like the honor of ripping these answers a new one?